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Cloutier’s Canada Corner
Marc Ramsay:
"Lemieux’s Injury Killed Our Fight Plan"
By Daniel Cloutier
MONTRÉAL - The Las Vegas bookies hit a home run in
establishing the British Billy Joe Saunders as favourite by
2-1 against the Montrealer David Lemieux, struck out out in
establishing the American Antoine Douglas favorite by 1/2 to
one against the Irish Gary O’Sullivan.
Saturday evening in the ring of the Bell Place in Laval, a
northern suburb of Montréal, Saunders (26-0-0) keeps his WBO
middleweight championship of the world, in beating Lemieux
(38-4-0) by unanimous decision in 12 rounds, and just before
this man event, O’Sullivan (27-2-0) won the WBO middleweight
InterContinental championship, in beating Douglas (21-2-1)
by TKO.
Marc Ramsay, the Lemieux’s trainer, believes that an injury
cost to Lemieux a win in this WBO 160 pounds world
championship.
“David is always at his best against a natural warrior, not
against a mover-runner like Saunders, but the big point, is
that David was unable to perform normally Saturday evening,”
said Ramsay. “He injured seriously his left shoulder in the
second round, and this injury prevented him to use his jab.
Like usual, David was planning to use his jab to prepare
intense attacks, but his jab was dead with the injury. This
injury killed our fight’s plan. It’s really frustrating.
Anyway, David gonna take the time necessary to cure this
injury, and I am sure he will perform well when he will
comes back in the ring.”
The spectators showed clearly their frustration against
Saunders, protesting against his strategy. “Saunders knew it
would be extremely dangerous for him to exchange punch for
punch with David,” said Ramsay. “It’s why he was moving
constantly from right to left and left to ring in the ring.
His strategy was frustrating the crowd, but Saunders knew it
was the perfect strategy to win the fight.”
Saunders was obviously happy of the result. “My strategy was
the good one to confuse Lemieux and dominate the action,”
said Saunders after the bout. “Do you think it would be
logical for me to exchange punch for punch with Lemieux?
Absolutely not, because it’s exactly what he was hoping. I
won the battle of the strategies and won clearly the fight.
Now, I want to move on. I want absolutely to fight for the
unification of the middleweight titles. If Gennady Golovkin
is unable to obtain a rematch with Saul Canelo Alvarez, I
will certainly try to face him to unify the WBO, WBA and WBC
world titles. I know I have now the experience and the
maturity to face a fighter like Golovkin. The people around
me will certainly try to make a reality with this
unification titles bout.”
On his side, O’Sullivan mentioned he hopes to face Saunders
as soon as possible. “I don’t know exactly what are the
Saunders plans, but I really believe it would be logical now
to organize a bout between him and me,” said O’Sullivan to a
British boxing writer. “In beating Antoine Douglas by TKO in
this WBO InterContinental championship, I proved I got the
talent, the experience and the maturity to fight for a world
title.”
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